The present invention relates to parallel, distributed processing systems, and more particularly relates to managing multiple subsystems being run under multiple levels of operating systems and system support software in a parallel, distributed processing system.
A parallel, distributed computing system, such as the IBM RISC/System 6000 Scalable POWERparallel Systems SP computer, contains multiple host computer systems or nodes, each running the AIX operating system (the IBM version of the UNIX operating system) and the IBM Parallel System Support Programs (PSSP) package of system support software. The nodes are grouped into one or more system partitions, each of which represents a logical domain which portrays a virtual SP environment. Introduced with PSSP version 2.2, each node in a system partition may run any supported level of operating system software (AIX). In addition, each node in the system partition may run any level of support software (PSSP) supported by the level of operating system running on that node.
This ability to run different levels of operating system and support software within the same system partition presents a number of new management problems for the administration of the system. Because different levels of operating system and support software may be running across nodes in the same system partition, it must be determined which level(or in some cases which multiple levels) of that support subsystem to initiate on any given node. Since different levels of subsystems must be managed according to the level of underlying software, it becomes administratively tedious and time-consuming for the administrator if he is required to manually track which level is being started and managed on each node. A uniform mechanism (identical interface) is required to automatically start, stop, refresh, etc. a subsystem running on a node regardless of what level of operating system or support software is running on that node.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,367,686 issued Nov. 22, 1994 to Fisher et al. for METHOD FOR AUTOMATED COMPLEX MULTILEVEL SOFTWARE INSTALLATION IN A DATA PROCESSING SYSTEM discloses a method for automatically installing multi-level software in an unattended fashion by building an installation package on a portable storage media. The package contains the data, instructions and pre-selected configuration information to perform the installation without manual intervention.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,444,851 issued Aug. 22, 1995 to Woest for METHOD OF ACCESSING CONFIGURED NODES IN A FACILITIES MANAGEMENT SYSTEM WITH A NON-CONFIGURED DEVICE discloses automated facilities management systems (FMS) wherein different nodes in a distributed FMS are running at different levels of software and/or need to be updated to different levels of software.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,471,617 issued Nov. 28, 1995 to Farrand et al. for COMPUTER MANAGEMENT SYSTEM AND ASSOCIATED MANAGEMENT INFORMATION BASE discloses a method of managing a plurality of networked manageable devices from a manager console using a management information base.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,550,980 issued Aug. 27, 1996 to Pascucci et al. for NETWORKED FACILITIES MANAGEMENT SYSTEM WITH OPTICAL COUPLING OF LOCAL NETWORK DEVICES discloses a controller which provides a unified approach to manage heterogeneous hardware devices. The disclosed facilities management system can automatically trigger commands to be run by sensing some registered change.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,416,917 issued May 16, 1995 to Adair et al. for HETEROGENOUS DATABASE COMMUNICATION SYSTEM IN WHICH COMMUNICATING SYSTEMS IDENTIFY THEMSELVES AND CONVERT ANY REQUESTS/RESPONSES INTO THEIR OWN DATA FORMAT discloses a method and system for establishing the context in which data exchanged between heterogeneous relational DBMS can be mutually understood and preserved and data conversions minimized. In the disclosed system, descriptive information for each machine in the system is stored into a database.